Syndicate

If you wait until it’s obvious, it’s too late… has become my defacto motto when it comes to a lot of things. I think the first time it occurred to me was when I started researching IPv6. The depletion of IPv4 is no surprise, and hasn’t been for quite a while, but it seems like most people are holding off even researching it until it becomes obvious that they need it. Again, by that time, if you’re in any kind of competitive company vying for market position, it’ll be too late. It won’t be obvious that it’s necessary until you see people financially punished for not taking those steps.

Lots of applicability to this idea, I need to ponder on it for a while. There are lots of changes coming, but which ones are going to matter and which ones do we need to take action on. Typically what happens is that larger corporations take longer to ponder on the new ideas, and then get hit hard by the market.

Fuel efficient cars are a good example of this. The profit margin for trucks and SUVs was so high that it did not make sense to switch to smaller engined cars, even though Peak Oil was going to push up the price of gasoline and Climate Change eventually going to put the price of emitting CO2 higher. Back in 2008 when the price of oil spiked for a few months, truck dealers where I live practically could not give the trucks away. Even with discounts that were most of the previous profit margin, the trucks were not moving off the dealers lots. Yes, the price of oil dropped again and most people tried to convince themselves that it was just speculators, but the car companies seem slowly to be waking up to the issue that fuel economy matters. The only problem is that the companies that held on to the idea of profitable trucks and SUVs the longest are being punished by the market now, since the lead time for getting a new design in the hands of the dealers is much longer than the time that companies have before the CDN$1.00/liter price of gasoline seems like the good old days.

Lots of applicability of this to software development as well, but that is for a later post.